SMIC announces ultra high density IP library for 0.11um Cu-BEoL process

SHANGHAI, CHINA: Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China's largest and most advanced semiconductor foundry, announced an ultra high density (UHD) library solution for its 0.11um Cu-BEoL (Copper Back End of Line) manufacturing platform that can reduce chip size by an average of 31 percent.

SMIC's comprehensive silicon-proven UHD IP solution incorporates SMIC's in-house UHD IP library, based on smaller bit cells, and Mentor Graphics' cool-memory IP library with MemQuest memory compiler, specifically designed for compatibility with SMIC's UHD solution. SMIC's in-house UHD library consists of a 6-track UHD standard cell library, UHD memory compiler, and UHD standard I/O library.

Mentor Graphics' UHD cool-memory IP library comprises coolSRAM-6T, coolREG-6T, coolREG-8T (Dual Port), coolREG-8T (Two Port), and coolROM. This unified library solution can generate different configurations to optimize power, speed, and density, and is available to SMIC customers free of charge.

SMIC's 0.11um UHD IP solution enables a 31 percent chip size reduction for a typical SOC design, when compared to a design that uses a traditional IP library. This can bring tremendous cost advantages to customers. The silicon-proven ultra high density solution can be used in a wide range of applications, including mobile storage devices, flash memory controllers, mobile multimedia players, digital televisions, and set-top boxes.

"SMIC's 0.11um Cu-BEoL process has long been recognized by our customers for its high stability. We have an accumulative shipment of more than 100,000 wafers adopting SMIC's 0.11um IP library on our existing Cu-BEoL platforms," said Steven Chen, senior director of SMIC's Product Marketing Division. "Our Beijing and Shanghai fabs provide customized service based on our customers' chip size and quantities in order to meet their manufacturing requirements. Now with the release of SMIC's 0.11um ultra high density IP solution, we can further help our customers lower their manufacturing costs and increase their market competitiveness."

"Mentor Graphics is very pleased to be able to offer its systemic, low-power and high density memory compiler technology to SMIC 0.11um users, to further optimize their design and embedded memory usage for additional density and cost gains," said Farzad Zarrinfar, MD of the Novelics business unit at Mentor Graphics.